![]() There are people marching for black lives and against police brutality. ![]() When people are out in the street marching, it doesn’t matter what it’s for. I relate this back to everything that’s going on right now. The tension between being hurt and wanting to take care of myself, that tension is what anger and rage really are. When I experience anger or rage, for me it’s a sign that I’m hurt and I’m hurting, and there’s a tension there. How do anger and rage connect with trauma and brokenheartedness?Īnger and rage are actually trying to point us to the trauma and the brokenheartedness. This is what is conducive to actually beginning to undo systematic white supremacy. Ethics means this is what is conducive to liberation, or another way of putting that is, this is what’s conducive to the reduction of violence. For me, we have to bring ethics back into secular mindfulness. Buddhist mindfulness is about liberation through cultivating awareness and ethics. Mindfulness, as it’s taught in the mainstream, will not be enough to undo trauma, racism and so forth. You’re working for freedom on both fronts.Ĭan mindfulness, which I think of as a spiritual practice, help with the kinds of things social activism deals with - for example, racial trauma? ![]() Like, yes, social activism - but also spiritual activism. And so once I started learning and having experiences in ultimate liberation, I then began to bridge the social liberation work together with the ultimate liberation. The ultimate liberation was an extension of the mental liberation that we cultivated through meditation. In Buddhism I saw that there’s an ultimate liberation that comes with a mental liberation. We can work socially for liberation, but there’s a different work that’s required for mental liberation. Lama Rod Owens is interviewed by David Montgomery for The Washington Post on Love and Rage, spiritual activism, Buddhism and white supremacy.Ĭan you tell the story of how Buddhism turned out to be the way to be an activist?
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